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Social workers’ caseloads do not align with the average calculated by the Department for Education, a Community Care poll has found.

Based on submissions from councils, the DfE calculated that, in September 2024, the average caseload for children’s social workers in England was 15.4. 

This was down from 16.0 twelve months earlier and 16.6 in 2022.

Social workers’ caseloads ‘well above’ DfE calculations

However, social workers have rejected the DfE’s calculations.

A Community Care poll with almost 600 votes found that the department’s average was “well below” 78% of respondents’ caseloads.

Only 15% said it was in line with their experience. 

‘I have never had a caseload as low as 15’

Social workers commenting on the related article also dismissed the figure, deeming it “misleading”.

“Numbers of children allocated to social workers is very misleading,” said Stella Potente. “How many families? What is the intensity of the work? How many of the families are in court proceedings? How many require parenting assessments?” 

Many admitted they never had a caseload of 15 cases, with Linsey Parker calling the number “a pipe dream”.

“If you double it, and add the extra hours outside working hours, it would be more realistic. Social workers just keep calm and carry on until they mentally can’t,” she said.

Jemma added: “I have never had a caseload as low as 15, and still don’t. I am also confused as to why the focus is on the number of cases and does not factor in the complexity. Social work should not be based on numbers and figures.”

Another practitioner, Roisin, who qualified in 2017, said she had been allocated 20 cases in her assessed and supported year in employment – a number that has not decreased since.

“[I have had] between 20-25 looked-after children cases. It’s not easy maintaining complex cases and families on a long-term basis with those numbers.”

‘Figure includes non-case-holding practitioners’

One social worker, Kelly, noted that the figure failed to be “a true reflection” of the reality because they included cases held by managers, who would generally be responsible for far fewer children than frontline practitioners, depressing the average.

Similarly, Guli said the DfE’s average was “artificially low” because social workers were, in practice, supporting unallocated siblings of children on their caseloads.

“The ultimate responsibility for safeguarding all these unallocated children falls on your unpaid and unrecognised overtime,” they added.

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Do you have a colleague, mentor or social work figure you can’t help but gush about?

Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.

Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how and why the person has inspired you.

*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*

If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

Average social worker caseloads have fallen to their lowest recorded level in local authority children’s services in England, according to Department for Education (DfE) figures.

Based on submissions from councils, the DfE found that 15.4 cases were held per full-time equivalent (FTE) practitioner in September 2023, down from 16.0 12 months earlier and 16.6 in 2022. The department started recording average caseloads in 2017, when the figure stood at 17.7.

The rate is calculated by dividing the number of children or young people allocated to FTE children’s social workers by the number of FTE practitioners.

The average fell in every region, in 2023-24, bar one, the North West, where it rose slightly, from 16.5 to 16.6. The sharpest fall was in the East Midlands (from 16.2 to 15.0), with London continuing to have the lowest overall average caseload (13.8, down from 14.4).

Falling number of case-holding social workers

In previous years, the caseload rate has fallen due to an increase in the number of FTE children’s social workers holding cases, amid a relatively stable number of cases.

However, from September 2023 to September 2024, their number fell by 1.5%, from about 21,111.4 to 20,803.5, with the drop in the rate driven instead by a 4.9% fall in the number of cases held by practitioners, from 337,055 to 320,461.

This is the lowest number of cases held by FTE children’s social workers since 2017, when the figure stood at 316,647.

Also, the fall over the 12 months to September 2024 was far steeper than the drop in the number of children in need recorded by councils in the year to March 2024. This fell from 403,090 to 399,460, a drop of 0.9%.

Opening up of child in need assessments beyond social workers

One possible explanation for the discrepancy is a change to the Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance in 2023 that permitted councils to allocate child in need assessments to non-social work qualified staff, such as early help or family support staff or social work apprentices.

Previously, the guidance, which councils must follow other than in exceptional circumstances, had stipulated that such assessments should be carried out by social workers. Cases must be overseen by a social work-qualified manager or practice supervisor, under the 2023 version of the guidance.

The amendment to Working Together was designed to enable the creation of multidisciplinary family help teams, which would be responsible for both targeted early help and child in need cases.

Part of wider reforms to children’s social care, these are designed to prevent families from having to change practitioner when they move between early help and statutory children’s social care, while also providing them with earlier and more supportive assistance to resolve challenges in their lives.

Family help is currently being tested in the 10 families first for children pathfinders, before a planned national rollout in 2025-26, funded by a £270m DfE grant.

Risk concerns where social workers are not case-holders 

The changes to Working Together were welcomed by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services for enabling councils to deploy their practitioner resource flexibly and focus their social workers on more complex cases.

However, both Ofsted and the British Association of Social Workers raised concerns about a potential increase in risks to children from non-social work qualified staff carrying out child in need assessments.

These concerns were echoed by respondents to a recent Community Care poll, 46% of whom said that having non-social work qualified staff carry out child in need assessments “would carry too much risk for children”. A further 43% were supportive in principle, but said alternatively qualified practitioners would need appropriate training and supervision to carry out the task.

Celebrate those who’ve inspired you

Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock

Do you have a colleague, mentor, or social work figure you can’t help but gush about?

Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.

Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how and why the person has inspired you.

*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*

If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

Just over a third of Cafcass social workers have caseloads above target levels but the proportion in this category is continuing to fall.

The family courts body sees a caseload of 20 as being the maximum that enables relationship-based practice for social workers in its long-term teams.

As of mid-January 2025, 34.9% of family court advisers (FCAs) in these teams held caseloads of 20+, down from 42.1% a year earlier, while 5.5% had caseloads of 25+, down from 8.4% in January 2024.

The figures were shared in chief executive Jacky Tiotto’s report to Cafcass’s board meeting, held at the end of last month.

Average caseload holds steady following fall over previous year

The average caseload for these practitioners was 18 as of the end of December 2024, a similar level to that in September of last year, though down from 18.9 in December 2023 and 19.9 in May 2023.

For practitioners working in short-term private law teams – which handle cases up to a first hearing – the average caseload had fallen from 34.4 to 32.5 in the year to December 2024.

The reductions reflect an 8.5% fall in the number of open cases at Cafcass over the past year, from 30,096 in January 2024 to 27,542 in January 2025.

This was driven by a 10.1% fall in the number of open private law cases, from 18,244 to 16,406, which was accompanied by a 6% drop in the public law total.

At the same time, turnover of social workers has been stable, at 14.8% over the past year, a similar figure to the previous 12 months.

In a statement in September 2024, Cafcass said that further reducing caseloads was a “management priority”. It pledged to work with family justice partners to reduce demand and the additional work caused by delayed court proceedings, while also developing a “framework for a balanced workload”, setting out what was “reasonable and fair to expect of a confident and competent social worker”.

Cafcass working to reduce caseload variations between teams

Following the latest figures, it said these remained areas of work.

A spokesperson said: “Our recent data shows that the number of FCAs with more than 20 children’s cases with known future work for Cafcass open to them is continuing to decline with the national average level now consistently below 20 such children’s cases, although it is still not where we want it to be in every area of the country.

“We continue to work collaboratively with our partners in the family justice system with the shared aim to reduce both demand and also the duration of proceedings. We are also working internally to reduce the variation in the level of open children’s cases across our teams, including by targeting recruitment and retention activity in those areas where it can be hardest for us to recruit.

“We are making positive progress internally on the framework for a balanced workload.”

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Guidance on improving caseload management and administrative support for social workers is being developed by a group set up by the government to identify solutions to high workloads in children’s services.

The national workload action group (NWAG) is also working on resources to help practitioners with caseload recording and digital practice, while examining the case for supervision standards.

The Department for Education (DfE) set up the NWAG in 2023 to “consider drivers of unnecessary workload and to develop solutions so that social workers have enough time to spend working directly with children and families”.

It includes representatives from the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), British Association of Social Workers (BASW), the Principal Children and Families Social Worker Network, Social Work England and UNISON.

It is being supported by consortium comprising Research in Practice, Essex County Council and King’s College London, and is also working with a group of local authorities who are helping test the resources it is developing.

Priority areas for tackling workloads

Last year, it identified five priority areas and recently released minutes from its meeting on 18 November 2024 highlighted the work it was doing in relation to each:

1. Caseload management – a framework to support councils with workforce planning, including promising approaches, is being developed.
2. Managerialism and administration – the group is working on a resource setting out the value of dedicated administrative support in helping social workers manage their workloads, to support children’s services in making a business case for such support.
3. Case recording – the NWAG is developing a resource to help professionals navigate the range of available case recording tools and support ethical implementation. Based on minutes from a previous meeting, such tools include those based on artificial intelligence.
4. Supervision – the group will set out the case for and against the introduction of supervision standards to the DfE.
5. Hybrid working and digital practice – this includes developing tools to support social workers with digital practice and help them understand the digital lives of children and young people, along with case studies of implementing hybrid working.

Though initiated by the former Conservative government, as part of its children’s social care reforms, the NWAG has continued under the Labour administration.

The NWAG held its final meeting on 20 January 2025, and will then submit a report, containing its suite of resources, to the DfE for approval.

Cafcass has agreed a pay deal for its staff covering 2024-25.

Staff, including the family court body’s approximately 1,700 social workers, have been a given a 4.43% increase, backdated to April 2024.

Pay talks at Cafcass were delayed by the general election, which meant the incoming Labour government did not issue a pay policy for the civil service until the end of July last year.

5% pay ceiling

This stated that government departments could, on average, increase their pay bills by 5% in 2024-25.

As is standard practice, Cafcass then entered talks with its sponsoring department, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), over its pay remit for 2024-25, before making an offer to the two unions representing staff, Napo and UNISON.

Though the MoJ gave Cafcass a remit to raise pay by 5%, its across-the-board offer to staff was less than this to allow scope for other pay increases made during the year.

‘The best outcome achievable’

Napo and UNISON then agreed the offer after members backed it in an indicative ballot.

A Cafcass spokesperson said: “The pay award of 4.43% represents the best outcome achievable within this year’s pay guidance, and is the minimum award received by all employees. When the 4.43% increase is considered alongside adjustments already made in line with contractual pay progression and increases in the national living wage, some staff received higher percentage awards than this.”

For Napo, general secretary Ian Lawrence said the “decisive view from members” was that the pay deal agreed was the best that could be achieved.

Variable pay deals for different social work groups

The settlement means that all three groups of public sector social workers in England received different pay settlements in 2024-25. The best deal – a 5.5% increase in pay – was given to NHS practitioners, while the majority of council practitioners were granted rises of £1,290 – £1,491 or £1,575 in London – equivalent to a 3-4% bump on their salaries.

That followed several years in which pay rises at Cafcass had lagged those for local authority practitioners, prompting concerns from management and unions alike about the organisation becoming less competitive on social work pay compared with councils.

Lawrence said this was still an issue and that Napo would be calling for it to be addressed through increased investment for Cafcass.

Union looking to tackle workloads

He added that the union’s other priorities for the forthcoming year included tackling workloads among Cafcass practitioners.

Social work caseloads at Cafcass fell from 2022-24, however, a Napo survey last year found practitioners were struggling with workloads, with the majority frequently working more than their contracted hours.

Lawrence said: “We want to work with management to review the national picture on workloads and how that manifests regionally. I welcome the news that there have been some reductions in the quantum of cases on Cafcass’s books.

“But if there’s been a reduction, what steps are management planning to take to ease the burden on staff who, in some areas, are still reporting a critical position around workloads?”

Children’s social care case numbers in England fell last year, official figures have shown.

Councils received fewer referrals and carried out fewer assessments in 2023-24 compared with 2022-23, according to the Department for Education’s annual children in need census.

As of 31 March 2024, authorities were supporting fewer children in need – a category that encompasses all those receiving a service from children’s social care – than they were 12 months earlier.

There was also a drop in the numbers on a child protection plan over the same period.

However, the number of child protection enquiries was stable year on year and well above pre-pandemic levels, while councils were also supporting more children in need than they were at the start of the decade.

Falling numbers of referrals

The number of referrals to children’s social care fell for a second consecutive year with 4.4% fewer received in 2023-24 (621,880) compared with 2021-22 (650,270). It was also below the level seen in the year before the pandemic (2019-20).

The fall over the past two years has been driven by a reduction in the number of referrals from the police, the biggest source of reported concerns to children’s social care. Constabularies sent in 177,210 referrals in 2023-24, down 7.6% on the 191,840 they sent in 2021-22.

Health and schools referral numbers have also fallen over the past two years, but more slowly.

The proportion of referrals that were re-referred within 12 months of a previous report was 22.4% in 2023-24, the same as in 2022-23 and a similar rate to each of the previous three years.

Outcomes of referrals

The percentage of referrals that resulted in no further action fell from 7.1% in 2022-23 to 6.3% in 2023-24, the same rate as that recorded in 2019-20.

The proportion of referrals that resulted in an assessment in which the child was found not to be in need was also at a similar level in 2023-24 (30.3%) as in 2019-20 (30.2%), though an increase on that recorded in 2022-23 (29.9%).

The number of completed assessments fell from 655,540 in 2022-23 to 643,170 in 2023-24, with the level also below the 665,660 carried out in 2019-20.

Assessments taking longer

The frequencies with which specific needs were recorded following an assessment in 2023-24 were similar to those in 2022-23.

As in the previous year, mental health and domestic abuse concerns about a parent were the two most commonly recorded factors, with each cited in just under one-third of cases where such information was recorded.

However, over time, the (median) average duration of assessments has increased, hitting 34 days in 2023-24, up from 33 in 2022-23 and 32 in 2019-20.

Children in need more likely to be older and from minority background

As of 31 March 2024, 399,460 children were classed as in need, a category that includes those on child in need (CIN) plans and child protection plans, looked-after children, disabled children and care leavers. This was down 0.9% on the level recorded in March 2023 (403,090) but up 2.6% on the March 2020 figure (389,260).

The proportion of children in need from an ethnic minority rose from 25% to 31% from 2015-24, exceeding the 27% of children in England and Wales who were from a minority, as recorded by the 2021 Census.

There has also been a shift in age, with those over 10 accounting for 59% of children in need in 2024, up from 48% in 2015.

Using data from 150 of the 153 authorities, the DfE estimated that 105,000 children were on CIN plans as of March 2024, the same as in 2023, but down from 110,000 in 2022. It said these figures should be treated with caution as this particular statistic was still in development and councils were likely to have variable recording practices for it.

Child protection enquiry numbers remain high

While the number of child protection enquiries fell from 2022-23 to 2023-24, this was only by 0.4%, and the number carried out (224,520) was significantly above the pre-pandemic total (201,000).

However, the number of children on child protection plans as of March 2024 by 1.7% on the previous year, reaching 49,900, the lowest year-end number since 2015.

The number of children on protection plans decreased across all categories of abuse – emotional, physical, multiple and sexual – in 2023-24, but rose by 1.2% for neglect. This remained the biggest category, accounting for just over half of all child protection plans (25,350 out of 49,900) as of March 2024.

While the overall number of plans recorded in 2024 was just 3.3% higher than a decade earlier, the number for neglect has grown by 21% over that time, a figure that prompted concerns from the NSPCC.

Concerns about rising levels of neglect

The charity’s associate head of policy, Abigail Gill, said: “Neglect is persistently the top concern reported to the NSPCC Helpline. We know that it can have a devastating impact on children, including on their physical and mental wellbeing, their attachment, and their brain development.

“We cannot continue on this trajectory. We need to see a national strategy put forward by government to support families earlier, so that we can prevent neglect before it damages their lives.”

Caseloads have fallen at Cafcass, but social workers are continuing to struggle with work pressures, according to a survey.

The family court body said that the average caseload for social workers in its long-term teams fell from 21.7 in spring 2022 to 19.9 in May 2023, before dropping further, to about 18 now.

For practitioners managing work up to the first hearing in private law, caseloads fell from 45.5 in spring 2022 to 38 as of May 2023, and then to 37 in May 2024.

Little change in reported overtime since 2021

However, a survey of family court advisers (FCA) by trade union Napo in June 2024 found that 93% of staff had worked extra hours in the previous four weeks that they had not been able to take back. Of this group, 86% said this happened frequently.

The results showed little change from a similar survey of FCAs in 2021, when 88% of respondents said they had done additional hours they had been unable to take part, of whom 89% said this happened frequently.

FCAs in long-term teams surveyed by Napo reported average caseloads of 21.5, above the average for all practitioners.

Fall in demand and action on caseloads

The number of cases open to Cafcass hit a peak of 37,611 in April 2021 on the back of high levels of demand and substantial delays to family court proceedings caused by the pandemic.

Numbers have since fallen by 24%, to 28,504 in July 2024, while Cafcass has also taken steps to tackle caseload levels among FCAs, a point registered by Ofsted in its inspection of the body earlier this year.

These have included applying a prioritisation protocol in areas of high demand, where lower-priority private law cases are overseen by a service manager until they can be allocated to an FCA.

It has also introduced post-assessment hubs in every region; these involve managers overseeing cases for which the work ordered by the court has been completed but a trial is at least six weeks away or not listed, removing them from FCAs’ caseloads.

FCAs’ concerns over practice ‘bureaucracy’

However, respondents to Napo’s survey said their workloads meant they lacked time for reflection or had to cut corners in their practice, while some warned they were experiencing stress or sickness to the point of resigning.

Besides the number of cases held by social workers, Napo said a recurring theme from responses was that expectations placed on staff to “complete an increasing number of tasks, many of which were seen by practitioners as overly bureaucratic”.

In this regard, respondents referred to the level of form-filling required for each case, quality assurance activities and aspects of Cafcass’s Together for Children practice model, such as writing introductory and endings letters to children and developing storyboards to explain to children what is happening to them.

In its inspection, Ofsted found that the model had been “instrumental in promoting practice that is kind, sensitive and respectful…that has children’s welfare and safety at the forefront of thinking” and had been “embraced by an overwhelming majority of the workforce”.

What FCAs see as a manageable caseload

When asked what would be a safe caseload, the average answer given by respondents to the Napo survey was 17.4.

The union called for Cafcass to reduce caseloads to 17-18, and urged “a rebalancing of priorities to give practitioners more time to work with families and increase managers availability to provide effective support and supervision”.

In response, a Cafcass spokesperson said: “We have actively reduced caseloads for our social workers. This was reflected in their feedback to Ofsted inspectors earlier in the year. We understand the importance of protecting social workers from unmanageable caseloads, which is why we set a cap during the pandemic when the courts were struggling to conclude proceedings and why we introduced the prioritisation protocol.”

‘Further reducing caseloads is a management priority’

However, the spokesperson pointed out that about 40% social workers in long-term teams held more than 20 cases, which is the level the organisation believes enables relationship-led practice.

“So, we are not yet where we want to be in every part of the country,” they added. “Further reducing caseloads is a management priority in those service areas where the average caseload is higher than the national average, not losing our focus on the needs of children and families.

“We are working with our partners in the family justice system to reduce demand and the additional work caused by delayed proceedings. We are also in the process of introducing a framework for a balanced workload, which will reflect what we see is reasonable and fair to expect of a confident and competent social worker at Cafcass.”

The spokesperson said Cafcass planned to “work collaboratively with our family court advisers and children’s guardians, and with our trade union partners to achieve our intention to reduce their average caseload to 18-20 active children’s cases in all our service areas”.

Napo general secretary Ian Lawrence said that, while the union was disappointed by the survey results, it was “pleased that senior managers have shown a willingness to engage on the findings”.

The government has vowed to continue with work initiated by its predecessor to tackle workloads among local authority children’s social workers.

The Labour administration has also indicated it will continue reforms started by the Conservatives to improve early help for families and boost the recruitment of foster carers.

In the House of Lords this week, education minister Baroness (Jacqui) Smith said the government would “continue the work of the national workload action group” (NWAG), and that it would report by January 2025 on how to reduce burdens on practitioners.

Workload action group

The NWAG is a group of sector leaders, established by the last government, to “consider drivers of unnecessary workload and to develop solutions so that social workers have enough time to spend working directly with children and families”.

The initiative came out of the Conservatives’ Stable Homes, Built on Love children’s social care reform agenda and was based on a recommendation from the 2021-22 Independent Review of Children’s Social Care (the “care review”).

It appointed a consortium led by Research in Practice, including Essex County Council and King’s College London, to support the NWAG up to March 2025,while also developing resources to help councils improve retention and make better use of agency staff.

Plans to tackle managerialism and caseloads

In spring this year, the consortium selected 22 councils to help develop and test resources designed to cut workloads, based on a shortlist of priority actions selected by the DfE from a wider menu produced by Research in Practice.

Brief published minutes from a NWAG meeting on 20 May 2024 said the priority actions related to managerialism and administration, supervision, workload and caseload management, case recording and hybrid working.

Baroness Jacqui Smith (photo from Department for Education)

Smith gave her pledge to continue the NWAG’s work in response to a question from Baroness (Diana) Barran – a Conservative DfE minister from 2022-24 – about the negative impact of social worker turnover on children in care.

In response, Smith linked tackling working conditions to enhancing workforce stability, pointing to both the NWAG and the separate work by the consortium to develop resources to boost social work retention, which she said would be published this autumn.

Use of agency staff ‘worrying’

The minister also described councils’ use of agency staff as “worrying”, in the context of 17.8% of full-time equivalent council children’s social workers in England being locums as of September 2023.

“There are many good and high-quality social workers who come through the agency route, but their position is more likely to be unstable than it would be with a permanent worker,” she said.

“That is why the department is already building a new relationship with the children’s social care workforce and is looking at how to improve support for workers in children’s social care.”

Agency social work rules

While referencing the NWAG and associated work, she did not refer to the agency social work rules drawn up by its Conservative predecessor, another element of Stable Homes based on a recommendation from the care review.

However, on 12 September 2024, the government confirmed that it would implement the rules.

These will require councils to set regional caps on how much they pay agencies to employ locums, not hire agency practitioners who do not have three years’ permanent experience and maintain direct management of all social workers engaged via agency project teams.

The rules will come into force in three stages. Most will be implemented from 31 October 2024, with councils then required to submit data on their use of agency staff from the start of 2025 and then the price caps coming into force in spring next year.

Speaking in July this year, just after Labour came to power, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) president, Andy Smith, said he expected the statutory guidance governing the rules to come into force in September.

Falling use of locums in anticipation of rules

He told Community Care at the time that the anticipation of the rules was leading councils to work together to reduce use of agency staff.

Meanwhile, four regions – the East of England, East Midlands, London and the South East – have announced a plan to develop a common agreement for their use of locums that is designed to tie in with the national rules.

Baroness Smith did set out other elements of the Stable Homes agenda that Labour would persist.

Fostering policies to continue

She said it would continue the policy of regional fostering recruitment hubs, which provide a single point of contact for people interested in fostering and support them through the process from initial enquiry to application.

Smith said the hubs covered 64% of the country, while councils not involved would be able to continue using Fosterlink, a DfE-funded support service to help them improve foster care recruitment practices.

The Conservatives provided £36m from 2023-25 to fund these and other initiatives in order to recruit 9,000 more foster carers and redress a 6% drop in the number of mainstream fostering households from 2021-23.

Labour to ‘build on’ family help work

Baroness Smith also said that the government would “build on” the work of the 10 families first for children pathfinders to respond earlier to the issues families face. The pathfinders are testing a new model of children’s services proposed by Stable Homes and recommended by the care review, which comprises:

• Multidisciplinary family help services, merging pre-existing targeted early help and child in need provision, to provide earlier support to families to help them overcome challenges and stay together.
• Expert-led multi-agency child protection teams, including specialist social workers, known as lead child protection practitioners, to improve the response of children at risk of significant harm.
• Greater use of family networks when families need support, involving the wider family in decision-making at an earlier stage and providing support packages to help them keep children safe and well at home.
• Strengthened multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, including an increased role for education.

Prior to Smith’s comments, Labour has been relatively quiet on how far it will follow the Stable Homes, Built on Love agenda.

Children’s Wellbeing Bill 

Instead, it has promoted the forthcoming Children’s Wellbeing Bill – announced in the King’s Speech – as its key vehicle for transforming children’s social care.

Janet Daby (credit: Richard Townsend Photography)

As set out in the King’s Speech, this is designed to strengthen multi-agency child protection arrangements while, earlier this month, children’s minister Janet Daby said it would also seek to tackle “profiteering” among providers of placements for children in care.

Smith repeated this point in the House of Lords this week.

“Local authorities are currently providing 45% of looked-after children’s placements and the private sector is providing 40%, some of which offer stability, high-quality and loving care for our children,” she said.

“However, where it is clear that placement providers are profiteering from the most vulnerable children in the country, this Government are absolutely committed to taking action.”

Researchers have proposed a definition of safer and effective staffing levels within social work to inform legislation on the issue in Northern Ireland.

The definition, based on practitioner feedback, is believed to be the first of its kind, and covers both staff sufficiency and practitioners having access to “regular supportive, reflective supervision”, “compassionate line management” and a “supportive team”.

The research team carried out 10 focus groups with social work teams from all five health and social care (HSC) trusts, interviewed over 20 practitioners and analysed time diaries that they provided.

It also analysed workloads across children’s services and older people’s teams in Northern Ireland’s HSC trusts, which identified both caseload sizes and vacancy levels.

The research was commissioned by the Office of Social Services (OSS) within Northern Ireland’s Department of Health (DoH) and is designed to inform the development of safe and effective staffing legislation for the region’s health and social care services.

It was carried out by a team of academics from Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast led by Paula McFadden, professor in social work at Ulster University.

Analysis of social work workloads

The team collected staffing data from 249 teams across the five HSC trusts, dated to February or March 2023.

In family intervention teams – long-term children’s services teams – the study found that the ratio of social workers to allocated cases was 1:18, while when unallocated cases were included, this increased to 1:20.

While the report did not make recommendations around caseload size, the 2022 Setting the Bar report, commissioned by Social Work Scotland, recommended a limit of 15 in children’s services.

Celebrate those who’ve inspired you

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Impact of high vacancy levels

The situation was driven in part by high vacancy levels, with 22.4% of posts in family intervention teams being unfilled at the time.

Were these posts filled, the case ratios would have fallen from 1:14 for allocated cases and 1:16, once unallocated cases were added.

Children’s social workers interviewed for the research reported that both the complexity and urgency of cases, and administrative burdens, had increased over time.

Working conditions were better, the research found, when there was camaraderie and positive relationships within the team, with a supportive manager who promoted shared risk-taking, and there was regular formal and informal supervision.

Meanwhile, in older people’s community teams, the research found there was one practitioner for every 48 allocated cases, while the ratio was 1:55 when unallocated cases were included.

Again, this was partly driven by vacancies, with 12.6% of posts in the teams being unfilled. Filling these would have resulted in ratios of 1:42 for allocated cases and 1:49 when all cases were taken into account.

Social workers’ views on their caseloads

However, social workers who took part in the research suggested that the ideal caseload in an older people’s community team was 35.

“There was wide agreement that a ‘safe’ and ‘fair’ volume of cases for each social worker should consider time, travel and case complexity, acknowledging that complexity can fluctuate over time, alongside the level of liaison with other professionals and services required for each case,” the report added.

Most social workers who took part in the research perceived their caseloads to be high and, in many cases, unmanageable, while researchers also found that practitioners’ health and wellbeing were being “increasingly impacted by workload pressures”.

Like children’s services colleagues, older people’s social workers also highlighted the importance of their line manager, a supportive team and regular supervision in promoting safe staffing.

The report was published against the backdrop of significant concerns about social work staffing in Northern Ireland that has led to several rounds of strike action by the main union for the profession, NIPSA.

Chief social worker ‘recognises challenges facing staff’

In a foreword to the research report, Northern Ireland’s chief social worker, Aine Morrison, who works within the DoH, said she recognised “the significant challenges social work services NI face currently and the pressures this puts on staff”.

“There is a complex interplay of factors affecting current staffing levels including population factors causing increased demand for services, the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, funding shortfalls and the resultant impact on staff wellbeing,” she added.

“While defining what safe staffing means is complex and brings many challenges, I believe that it is essential that we set some standards for what we believe to be reasonable workloads.”

The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) Northern Ireland, which contributed to the study, welcomed the proposed definition of safer and effective staffing.

‘We need more social workers’

“We need more social workers, that is beyond doubt,” said BASW NI professional officer Noeleen Higgins.

“However, the safer and effective staffing report is helpful in highlighting that achieving safe staffing is not only about having enough staff. It correctly focuses on the importance of supporting and developing staff to have the right knowledge, experience and skills.”

The report will be followed by a further study that will make recommendations for caseload sizes and models and tools for calculating these.

The chief social worker added that both reports would inform DoH guidance on safe staffing levels in social work.

Consultation on safer staffing

The DoH is currently consulting on the content of its legislation on safe and effective staffing, for which it has proposed:

• Introducing guiding principles for health and social care staffing in Northern Ireland that the DoH and health and social care trusts must have regard to.
• Placing the DoH and the health and social care trusts under a duty to carry out evidence-based workforce planning.
• Requiring health and social care providers to take all reasonable steps to ensure suitably qualified staff in such numbers as are appropriate for the health, wellbeing and safety of patients and the provision of safe and high-quality care.
• Placing the DoH and health and social care trusts under a duty to take all reasonable steps to ensure there are sufficient numbers of specific staff groups, including social workers.

The consultation closes on 14 October 2024.

Social workers have little faith in a Department for Education’s (DfE) project to cut their workloads, a Community Care poll has found.

Three-quarters said they did not believe resources produced by the national workload action group (NWAG) would result in a reduction in the burdens on children’s practitioners.

The NWAG, a group of sector leaders, is working with social workers and managers from 22 councils to develop and test resources designed to cut workloads, in areas including caseload management, supervision, cutting bureaucracy and social workers’ working environment.

The group was set up last year as part of the DfE’s children’s social care reforms, with a mission to “identify unnecessary workload pressures…and recommend solutions to address them”.

However, a recent Community Care poll that amassed 817 votes found that the majority of practitioners (97%) did not feel confident that the NWAG’s work would reduce workloads.

Of those, 76% were “not at all” confident and 21% “not so much”. Only 3% believed that the action group’s work might succeed in curbing workloads.

‘Spend the money on recruitment.’

Comments under the related article showed social workers calling for the DfE to instead turn its resources to addressing social worker shortages – the prime reason behind workloads, according to practitioners.

“The problem is a lack of social workers due to increased demand, ongoing cuts in services and a reliance on projects that are not sustained due to lack of funding,” said Tom.

“Reducing bureaucracy and releasing time are by-words for, ‘We need you to work harder with no more money…but we will waste a massive amount of money, time and resources making it look like we are doing things’. After 25 years as a qualified senior social worker, I am opting out.”

Gerald commented on “the irony of asking social workers to take on additional work to look at how to reduce workloads”. 

“Spend the money on recruitment, on training competent managers, skill up supervisors to listen rather than offload their anxieties about waiting times onto us. It really isn’t that complicated,” he added.

“I’ve just bet a colleague that if there is just one new recommendation that comes from this rather than the rehashing of what social workers have said for years, I’ll buy her cat a new toy. Fully confident my money is safe.”

‘Workforce strategy, not a workload strategy’

Another social worker asked for a “workforce strategy” instead of a workload one.

“Would it not be more helpful to do the unthinkable and properly consider that there aren’t enough social workers and the DfE and the Department of Health and Social Care have no coherent national social work strategy? It is that, not other issues, that is causing workload issues,” they said.

“The workload strategy that some feel is needed here is a workforce strategy, coupled with a commitment to help those in society who have been disenfranchised, besmirched and castigated as the problem.”